Time to face music

Parliament wants answers from Zuckerberg on data deal

FACEBOOK chief Mark Zuckerberg could appear before the Australian Parliament’s intelligence committee over revelations the social network shared personal user data with Chinese tech giant Huawei.

Labor MP Anthony Byrne, deputy chair of the high-powered joint intelligence and security committee, said the 34year-old Facebook tsar owed Australia’s 15 million users some answers.

“It is completely unacceptable that information from Facebook users has been slyly handed over to Huawei by Facebook,” Mr Byrne told The Australian yesterday.

“I want to know why Mr Zuckerberg allowed this to happen. If need be, he will be invited to appear before the (committee) in a public hearing to explain himself to our committee and the Australian people.”

Mr Byne has the support of Liberal committee chairman Andrew Hastie. Liberal frontbencher Zed Seselja said companies must not put profits ahead of protecting its users’ data.

“Where companies look to do deals, where they give away personal information, where they sell personal information, obviously they need to be held accountable for that,” he told Sky News.

“I think Australians who are using Facebook and other social media would hope that some of their data can be protected, so Facebook has a responsibility to do that.”

Labor’s Jenny McAllister says the data deal raises some very significant issues about how Facebook operates, saying the company has been “quite negligent” in describing to consumers what was happening to their data.

“They’re really significant issues for privacy,” Senator McAllister said. “Consumers, Facebook users, internet users, have a right to know really clearly what the platforms that they’re interacting with are planning to do with their data.”